Opening Reception with the Artist :Saturday, November 15 7 – 11 PM

TRANSFER is pleased to present ‘EVIDENT MATERIAL’ a new series of work from Phillip David Stearns. For this exhibition, Stearns produced film-based images without a camera by applying various household chemicals and 15,000 volts of alternating current directly to the film. In a flash, arcs spread out across the surface, burning holes and igniting the film. As in our eyes, images are conveyed in a stream of such electric impulses. Here such impulses are amplified some 300,000 times.

Statement from the Artist:
“The sentiment that the camera is an extension of the eye is taken to an extreme. When looking through the Fujifilm FP-100c instant color film datasheets, the similarities between the layering of materials in the film and the layering of cells in the retinal is striking. Perhaps it is because the development of such film technologies parallels an evolving understanding of how the eye sees.”

This work continues previous explorations challenging the ontology of post-digital photography using extended techniques—bending, cracking and breaking the medium. The works in ‘EVIDENT MATERIAL’explore the potential for analog photographic media to operate beyond their intended capacity for reproducing a world of appearances. The process of extension is applied to every material in such a way that reveals process itself as evidently material.

PHILLIP DAVID STEARNS, (USA, 1982) Based in Brooklyn, NY, Stearns’s work is centered on the use of electronic technologies and electronic media to explore dynamic relationships between ideas and material as mobilized within complex and interconnected societies. Deconstruction, reconfiguration, and extension are key methodologies and techniques employed in the production of works that range from audio visual performances, electronic sculptures, light and sound installation, digital textiles, and other oddities both digital and material.

His work has been exhibited internationally at electronics arts festivals, museums, and galleries including: Turku Biennial 2013, WRO Biennale 2013, Transmediale 2013, Denver Art Museum (2013), The Photographer’s Gallery London (2012), The Camera Club of New York (2012), Eyebeam (2012, 2007), Harvestworks (2010, 2012); Gli.tc/H 2112; and more. Full bio

Today, our experience of the environment is modified by the use of technology and confined to urban planning. Our ever-growing communities no longer allow for an undomesticated state of wilderness. Technology functions as a tool with which we relate to our habitat, enabling us to select, loop and screen our experience of the natural phenomena obscured by the cityscape. Our computers and cell phones have become cozy portals into nature.

Landscape with Devices, opening on August 28th, 2014 at FRIDMAN GALLERY, presents the works of three artists who reinterpret nature for the digital age.

Noa Dolberg’s Gadgets For the Cave Man II, is a representation of a living campfire, created with flickering light bulbs and the crackling sounds of fire. The gallery space turns into a cave, recalling the surroundings of early humans during the night, in a safe and intimate way. Phillip Stearns’ multimedia installation proposes a parallel view of the idyllic sunset, one that is altered and transformed by computer technology. A random image of a sunset is repeatedly scanned and processed pixel-by-pixel, while simultaneously being projected onto gallery walls. Esther Ruiz’s sculptural works of concrete, neon and plexiglass create fictional landscapes. Various sized totems of self-contained narratives, they are objects of an imaginary natural world — past, future and outer-planetary.

Seen together, these artists’ works become tools for creating landscapes of convenience. Nature is no longer noisy, scary, isolated or removed from us; it can now be switched on and off, rearranged and customized until it becomes our intimate playground.

]]>https://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/landscape-with-devices/feed/0phillipstearns20140826_193234_previewHigh Voltage + Instant Film + Computerized Jacquard Weavinghttps://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/high-voltage-instant-film-computerized-jacquard-weaving/
https://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/high-voltage-instant-film-computerized-jacquard-weaving/#respondMon, 17 Mar 2014 22:46:55 +0000http://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/?p=3259]]>
I was curious to see how well images from the High Voltage Image Making project would transfer into textiles, so put together a design file made from the lead image for the Kickstarter campaign and sent it off to the weavers who make my Glitch Textiles.

I’m super pleased with the results and will be making this design available for a limited time, exclusively through the kickstarter campaign as a reward for backing at the $225 level.

Learn how to use text editors and hex editors to make glitch art and then turn a series of glitched images into an animated GIF. We begin with a brief introduction to what Glitch Art is, the materials involved, and then dive into hacking the materiality of our digital world.

PS – I’m providing the cameras and you get to take yours home with you after the workshop!

Learn how to make images like this:

DCP_2995 created with a modified Kodak digital camera

]]>https://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/workshops-and-classes-online-and-offline/feed/0phillipstearns25% sale Through End of Febhttps://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/25-sale-through-end-of-feb/
https://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/25-sale-through-end-of-feb/#commentsWed, 12 Feb 2014 17:53:52 +0000http://phillipstearns.wordpress.com/?p=3212]]>Don’t know about you, but this winter has been brutally cold up here in Brooklyn. Grab a glitch blanket at GlitchTextiles.com for 25% off using the promo code 25FEB2014. Stay warm.

Designs:

*NEW* Infected Blankets – throws designed by translating the complete genomes of well known viruses into pixelated mosaics. Catching, but not contagious.

The palette is fixed and I’ve settled on my final design constraints and source material. For the next two working days in the lab, I’ll be weaving fragments from core memory dumps. Raw binary data from my system RAM have been rendered into a 6-bit color-space with a total of 64 colors. The data itself is a collection of fragments of files, images, sounds, temporary data and programs, a sketch of my activities assembled according to the obscure logic of my operating system.

Complete documentation of the process and resources will come in the following weeks.

After having my PC Laptop, camera, and audio recorder stolen on a train to Amsterdam, I am in debt to my dear friend Jeroen Holthuis for helping me write a program in Processing which performs variable bits per channel rendering of raw binary data in a similar fashion to Paul Kerchen’s LoomPreview. He has also been kind enough to loan me his camera and host me for some of my time in the Netherlands. Many thanks!